Tuesday, July 19, 2016

That Fair Seal of Love

 
He will make her wilderness like Eden.
  Isaiah 51:3
 
"Methinks, I see in vision a howling wilderness,
a great and terrible desert,
like to the Sahara.
 
I perceive nothing in it to relieve the eye, all around I am wearied with a vision of hot and arid sand, strewn with ten thousand bleaching skeletons of wretched men who have expired in anguish, having lost their way in the pitiless waste. What an appalling sight! How horrible! a sea of sand without a bound, and without an oasis, a cheerless graveyard ....
 
 But behold and wonder! Upon a sudden, upspringing from the scorching sand I see a plant of renown; and as it grows it buds, the bud expands-it is a rose, ...Call it not Sahara, call it Paradise. 

 
 Jesus is that plant of renown, and His presence makes all things new. ....for its sake you have been pitied and tended by divine providence, you are washed and cleansed from your defilement, you are adopted into heaven's family, the fair seal of love is upon your forehead, and the ring of faithfulness is on your hand-you are now a prince unto God, though once an orphan, cast away."

Charles Spurgeon